A Brimly NewsletterRoom Temperature
Solidarity With Everyone Who Can't Just Order In
Years of cooking every single thing ourselves, and the Sunday dinner that finally felt like a night off.
September 18, 2026
“Pizzaiolo”— Image courtesy of Brimly
I put a bottle of barbecue sauce back on the shelf last week.
I had read the whole label, the way I always do, and it was going beautifully. No wheat. No soy. I was most of the way down the list and had allowed myself to feel slightly hopeful about it, and then there it was in the smallest letters at the very end. Guar gum.
Back it went. Nash made ours from scratch again that weekend, as he does.
Consider this a show of solidarity with everyone who does not get to simply order dinner. I see you. I have not ordered food in from anywhere in years, and I have not eaten out in about as long, and I would like to sit with that for a minute.
Restaurants are better than they were, and I want to say that plainly, because people have worked to make it so. There are allergy menus now. There are servers who ask real questions and actually go back to the kitchen to check. That is new and it is good and I notice it.
But cross-contamination is not something a menu can promise its way out of, and I am the one who has to live in this body afterward. So I stopped. Not in one dramatic decision, either. It happened the way these things do, one uncomfortable evening at a time, until I looked up and it had been years.
Which means we cook. All of it. Every day.
I love this, and I need to say that before I complain. I love baking. I love that we can make more or less anything we want. But making every single thing from its component parts, forever, with no night off, is not the charming little lifestyle it sounds like out loud. It is a commitment. Some weeks it is a second job sitting on top of the first one.
Image courtesy of Fellipe Ditadi
Why We Don’t Use Xanthan Gum (or Any Gums) at Brimly
So I got simpler about it. Three ingredients, or fewer where I can manage. Meals I can put together without thinking, so that eating stops being a project four times a day.
The risk in that, and I feel it, is that food starts turning into fuel. Something to get down so you can carry on with the afternoon. I push back on that as hard as I can, because I still believe in sitting at a table with someone and taking your time about it. But the table takes more effort now than it used to, and I am not going to pretend it does not.
I tried oven meals for a stretch. Everything on one tray, one temperature, walk away. It worked, in the sense that dinner appeared. The flavor fell straight off a cliff. I did not love a single one of them.
And somewhere in there I realised something that still catches me out. I completely underrated how easy it used to be to have dinner arrive at the door. Before the gluten came out, before the soy came out, before I had any idea what a gum was. I called someone. It turned up. I had no notion of how much I was about to cut out of my life.
Which brings me to the oven.
There is an oven in this kitchen built for exactly one job. A proper one, the kind an actual pizzaiolo would use, bought for the sort of money you spend on a thing once in your life. (I am not saying the number and you cannot make me.) And for a long stretch it sat there doing nothing at all, because every frozen box I picked up was held together with the one ingredient I could not have.
Gluten-free? Easy, there are plenty. Gluten-free and soy-free? Down to a handful. All three, with no gums anywhere in it?
Nothing. Not one box.
“Eating Simplified”— Image courtesy of Brimly
Three or Less: Eating Simplified
Then a few months ago I started taking Sundays off. Genuinely off, both of us, nothing at all. Wonderful. Also, immediately: what are we eating on the one day nobody wants to work?
It was always going to be the dough. It is still baking, which I love. It is still working with my hands, which I love more. And once the pieces are prepped it comes together fast.
So I took the recipe that has been sitting on this site for years and started pulling the gums out of it, which is harder than it sounds. Yeast needs something to push against. It makes gas, the gas needs structure to inflate, and in most gluten-free doughs that structure comes from a gum. Take it out and you have to build it some other way, out of starches and hydration and a great deal of patience.
Months of it. The ratios first, over and over. Then the temperature, because a good dough at the wrong heat is still a bad dinner. Then the vessel, which mattered far more than I expected it to.
And then it worked.
It comes out the way it comes out of a proper shop. There is a bite to it. There is a pull. Nash does the barbecue sauce, gluten-free and soy-free, because obviously we cannot buy that either. Some weeks it goes into a pan and comes out closer to a deep dish. Mostly it goes on the stone. And yes, I cut into it while it is still far too hot, every single time, and I have stopped apologising for that.
For about an hour on a Sunday evening, it feels like we ordered in.
That is the whole thing, really. Not that I have solved anything, because I have not. The aisle is still the aisle and the label still says guar gum. But I have got one night a week that feels easy, and I built it myself, and after what went into it I am not going to be modest about that.
I am keeping the recipe, by the way. The one already on this site is good and it will not let you down, so please use it. But the gum-free Sunday version is going in a book, which I suppose I am announcing right here, and when that book exists I will tell you exactly which page to turn to.
If you are also someone who reads every label twice, I hope this week hands you one easy dinner. You have earned it more than most.
“Sausage & Onion Pizza”— Image courtesy of Brimly
Gluten-Free Sausage & Onion Pizza
One More Thing!
We have been talking about opening a side door. Brimly is a bakery at heart and that is how I want this site to feel, so the everyday dinners never quite fit here. The salads. The halal cart situation. Whatever Nash has made that I have no business keeping to myself.
Those might start turning up on our Substack, which Nash runs. Nothing is decided. But if you would like to see what is actually on our plates during the week, tell me so, and I will take it as a vote.
Thanks for reading, and see you next Friday.
Write to me at hello@brimly.co. Past issues are archived here.
Stephnie Grace is a recipe developer, editor, and co-founder of Brimly, specializing in gluten-free, soy-free, and gum-free baking. She writes Room Temperature, which lands every Friday.
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Steph writes about what actually happens in a gluten-free kitchen. Sends weekly.
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